This little piggie went to pasture. Thanks to our new Pallet Pig Fence!
Oh, my goodness. I’ve lost my mind. I love pigs.
It’s silly I know, we’ve raised chickens for meat and eggs, rabbits for meat, have dairy goats, grow lots of veggies but having pigs makes me feel totally legit. Like, who does that??? I know, lots of people… but it’s my first time with pigs so humour me.
This past weekend we put the nail in the coffin around here. Three days of non-stop work and FINALLY. We’re planted. Every seed has been dropped AND our sweet piggies have left the darn, stinky barn and are out under the shade of a huge tree, in the grasses. They’re rooting around like crazy and literally doing a happy dance! Happy meat HAS to taste better right???
I find myself scouring eBay for groovy, vintage knives for butchering day and stressing over how Joel and I will pull this off our first time with nothing more than YouTube videos to guide us. And six kids underfoot. Living on the edge!!!
I love it!
So back to our proud pig pasture.
Here’s how we did it:
Step one. FREE pallets.
Amen to that sister!
Nothing like FREE pallets for building a pallet pig fence!!!!
Homesteading is NOT a cheap lifestyle. I always tell people who are interested curious about becoming homesteaders/hobby farmers that the first few years especially is NOT about saving money. It’s more about quality control.
It feels like every time you turn around you’re launching a new aspect of your farm be it hatching chicks or raising bees and you’re shelling out the money so, when we considered a lovely environment in which to raise our beautiful Berkshires we wanted to spend as LITTLE as possible.
It’s spring and we’ve had lots of projects. Time to go super cheap. Friends of ours have a business that brings in a burdensome amount of pallets and they offered us some. Now, you know, I hate the pallet trend. I ain’t making no bookshelf or coffee table out of splintery pallets OK? But nice uniform, free pallets for my piggies? Absolutely.
For now, our chicken tractor is not being used so we’re using it for the pig housing. Nestled under a huge tree out back, nice and shady, we then shaped the pallets off the front of the chicken tractor. We got about 56 dollars worth of fence posts and drove them DEEP into the ground (pigs are strong) and then slide the pallets up and over the top. Then we screwed the pallets together. If we need to reinforce the fence as the strength of the pigs increases we can drop more posts down in and pound them into the ground. Right now the area is 200 square foot or so. Yes, “pasture” is a generous word but our friends will have more pallets for us in a couple weeks and we will at least double it. True, these little guys will end up in our freezer and be sizzling on my cast iron but there is something that feels SOOOOO good about treating an animal that you are going to eat with RESPECT. And surely respected meat tastes better too, right?
So, now for fun, we head out to the back forty (read three) to visit our delightful bees AND our pigs. Better than television!!!
Speaking of…
I’m gonna go make sure they have enough food and water for the afternoon. It looks like rain.
We’re going to do pigs too, next spring. ugh. I’ll be honest, it’s the only homesteading thing I’m NOT into. Pigs stink. I am the one gung-ho on everything else, it’s hubs that wants piggies. I’ll be interested in gaining some wisdom form you once you’ve been through the whole deal. We close on our 5 acres next week! Yee-haw! The house is a far cry from my vintage farmhouse dream, but the land suits us, and I’ll had character to the home as we go. Glad to see you blogging a bit more 🙂
Pigs are great! This is our first year raising them also. The thing we learned the hard way is to remember to worm them monthly and make sure you reinforcethe fencing as they grow.
But it keeps tables crapes and fridge clean out days fun and easy – just give it to the pigs. 🙂 They have wonderful personalities and are a hoot to talk to when you are doing your chores. My two get along fine with our curious dogs who like to share their food at times – lol.
We got Berkshire’s this week too! We had Large Blacks last year, and sadly, have too long of a gap between pigs, which will result in no bacon for some time. The Berkshires seem friendlier than the Blacks, but that could just be how they were raised thus far, the certainly are cuter. My daughter noticed at feeding time that the seemed to have cleaned house, raking the poopy hay to the side….they are actually are pretty clean animals=)
Well done 🙂
What made you decide on that breed? Did you do some research on pigs or just buy what was available? Looking myself. Thanks,
Ahrisha
We love the BBS shows Victorian and Edwardian Farm and they raise Berkshires on that show. My friend Shaye Elliott has nothing but wonderful things to say about Old Spots but the closest breeder is three hours away and I’m just too pregnant for that drive. So I figured we’d go with the Berkshires! So far they are so friendly and we love them! Another gal in the area swears that the meat is a bit sweet and says we will be very happy with this breed.
We are planning to get a pair of pigs this spring and I was wondering how this system worked out over the summer and fall?
It went great! They only broke out once and it was an area where we did not have pallets.
Hiya, This is a lovely food recipe, thank you for taking the time to write the article. I am a good food lover and We like baking cookies.